B. Gingrich: He didn't need any encouragement. I have always read a lot. And so did she [Kathleen]. So he was around a bunch of readers and maybe he was just following the example or he just wanted to learn. And that's one of his attributes --is that he does want to learn and he's willing to spend the time and the effort to learn.

Q: When he was a child, did his precocity ever surprise you?

B. Gingrich: No. Not really. I was gone an awful lot. In the field. When I went back to Korea the second time, he was already gone. He was already married. So, I wasn't the influence in the home that she was or that her mother was, to be perfectly honest.

Q: Did you have expectations of Newt?

B. Gingrich: No. This all came as a complete surprise. I knew that he was smart. I knew that if he pursued an educational career that he'd do very well, and he did. I mean, he's a Ph.D. They don't just hand them out. Yeah, I knew that he'd be absolutely successful in the academic world, but it came as a surprise when he got into politics.

Q: Was Newt easy or difficult [to] raise up, to discipline, for example.

B. Gingrich: I never had that many occasions to discipline. I tried to reason with him or talk to him. I never struck him. When he was three years old I spanked him one time. But that was the only time. But from then on, I never hit him. "I hit him," --that's a hell of a term. But I never disciplined him physically. Now, I talked to him. And he was the kind of child that if you gave him a reason why he shouldn't do it, he would accept it.

Q: Did you ever have expectations that he might pursue a military career?

B. Gingrich: No. He is very nearsighted. You probably know that he can barely see across the street without his contacts. He has two of the flattest feet that there ever was. And he was never physically capable or qualified [for the] military. And I don't think he really had the desire, even though in college for a short time he was in the Air Force ROTC.

Q: There was that famous story of his seeing Verdun and it changing his world view and giving him a notion of what he wanted to be in life...

B. Gingrich: We were in France.

Q: Did you recognize that at the time as being some great watershed moment in Newt's life?

B. Gingrich: No. And he never said anything about it. He never discussed it. But evidently it made a lasting impression upon him. And there's something about Verdun that will make a lasting impression. It's one of the gloomiest places that I've ever been in my life. Like a miasma that hangs over the whole place.

Q: There was a time when things were a little bit strained with Newt and the family when, for example he had a relationship with his high school teacher. I gather you didn't approve.

B. Gingrich: No, I didn't. I didn't. I refused to go to the wedding. But once the first daughter was born, all that was down the drain. We quickly became close again.